This will be short, but probably not very sweet.

We hosted the end-of-season all-night soccer party Friday night/Saturday morning. Other than a couple catnaps, I had no sleep from 5am Friday morning until 7pm Saturday evening. I'm getting to old for this, but the kids seemed to have had fun. We got some really good pictures from playing Twister, which, as everyone who has ever played knows, is nothing but a legitimization of extreme teen groping.

Debbie left for her mom's place Saturday afternoon. Her mom had knee surgery, so Debbie is down there helping her out. Once again, Nestina and I are on our own for a few days, so hot meals are appreciated.

Sunday was mostly a lazy day. I was going to do some work on the roof of the house, but the 75 mph wind gusts sort of put a stopper on those plans. It was probably just as well; I needed some serious downtime.

If you need to raise your blood pressure, go read this. Our economic system, and in fact our civilization, is based on the notion of people being able to reasonably assume that they will enjoy the fruits of their own labor. As this story shows, this is no longer the case. Understand, this is not a couple rogue conservators ripping off old people. This is a legitimate industry, operating fully within the law and with the active help of the courts, that seeks to seize the assets of the elderly without their knowledge or consent.

I gave up investing for retirement some time ago when I did the math and figured out that it is impossible to save enough money to outrun inflation. I was saving to the point of serious financial pain, and the money would have run out long before I died unless I worked until I was 80. Of course, now I don't have to worry about it; my diabetes will kill me long before retirement age. But in any case, what is the point of forgoing pleasure now to save for retirement, only to be declared incompetent in a three-minute court hearing you are not even informed of, and having your assets turned over to a complete stranger? According to the article, you get the attention of these vultures by having a lot of assets. So my response is don't have them. Spend all you have now and plan on working until you drop dead, because what inflation doesn't eat will be legally stolen from you by some random "person."

Fred Reed discusses the decline of the major media. Anyone with half a brain knows that the reason no one pays attention to network news or any of the major newspapers is that they refuse to talk about what people want to hear about. I haven't bothered with ABCNNBCBS in decades. I haven't touched a newspaper, other than the Northern Express, since I delivered them at age 12. I used to be a real NPR junky, but I grew tired of being told my political positions were stupid by people who are provably from the left side of the bell curve. If the whole lot of them disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't notice. I suspect not many people under the age of 50 would.

Gotta go.